In the formation of color paper it is known that the base paper has applied thereto a layer of polymer, typically polyethylene. This layer serves to provide waterproofing to the paper, as well as providing a smooth surface on which the photosensitive layers are formed. Generally photosensitive paper is printed and processed with consumer images during a photoprocessing operation yielding consumer images in convenient sizes for viewing, display, and storage. Typically, consumer images are adhered to various surfaces such as refrigerators, photo albums, and display frames. At present, to adhere reflective images to various surfaces, the consumer is required to apply an adhesive on the backside of the image to adhere the image to various surfaces. In addition to adhesive, magnets and various adhesive tapes are also used. It would be desirable if photographic paper contained a peelable repositionable adhesive that could be activated by the consumer to allow an image to be adhered to various surfaces.
It has been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,507,166 to apply an adhesive coated release sheet to the backside of exposed, developed photographic paper prior to the cutting of the photographic paper into strips or sheets. While this method of creating adhesive backed photographs does produce an acceptable adhesive backed image, it is inefficient and costly. The photofinisher must purchase additional special equipment and an adhesive coated release sheet to apply the adhesive to the backside of the photographic paper. It would be desirable if a photographic paper contained a repositionable adhesive that did not require the photofinisher to purchase extra materials or equipment to provide an adhesive backed photograph.
Present digital repositionable images that are typically used for stickers and dry mounting of digital images are constructed using a repositioning adhesive with an adhesive liner applied to the backside of the imaging layer. The adhesive system is typically applied in the manufacturing process for digital image support, and the adhesive is exposed by the consumer after the image has been formed in the digital imaging layer. The most widely used technology for the formation of the images is ink jet printing. While ink jet imaging does provide acceptable image quality for some repositionable imaging applications, it suffers from a long dry time and at present cannot match the image quality of silver halide imaging systems. There remains a need for a high quality silver halide reflective receiver with a peelable and repositionable adhesive layer.
In the formation of color paper it is known that the base paper has applied thereto a layer of polymer, typically polyethylene. This layer serves to provide waterproofing to the paper, as well as providing a smooth surface on which the photosensitive layers are formed. While the polyethylene does provide a waterproof layer to the base paper, the melt extruded polyethylene layer used in color paper has very little dimensional strength and, as a result, cannot be used alone as a carrier of an image. It has been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,244,861 to utilize biaxially oriented polypropylene in receiver sheets for thermal dye transfer. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,244,861 high strength biaxially oriented sheets are laminated to cellulose paper with low density polyethylene. While the biaxially oriented sheet in U.S. Pat. No. 5,244,861 is an efficient thermal dye transfer support, the biaxially oriented layer cannot be stripped from the paper and reapplied to a different surface.